Literature /
Earthsea

aka: The Farthest Shore

Edit Locked

Advertisement:

A classic series of high fantasy books by Ursula K. Le Guin, which began as a pair of short stories in 1964, "The Word of Unbinding" and "The Rule of Names". These stories were shortly followed by a trilogy of young adult novels:

A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)

The Tombs of Atuan (1971)

The Farthest Shore (1972)

Decades later, Le Guin returned to Earthsea with a fourth novel, followed after another decade by a collection of new short stories and one final novel. These books were more adult than the original trilogy, dealing with some very mature subjects.

Tehanu (1990)

Tales from Earthsea (2001)

The Other Wind (2001)

Le Guin revisited Earthsea again in 2014 with the short story "The Daughter of Odren", followed in 2018 by the very last Earthsea story, "Firelight".

The world of Earthsea is a sprawling archipelago where magic is a part of everyday life, dragons are an occasional threat, and the afterlife is a very real place. The original trilogy focuses on Ged, a wizard who rises from a modest life as a goatherd in a sleepy village to become the Archmage, the master of the school of magic who rules in place of Earthsea's long-abandoned line of kings. Ged overcomes grave mistakes made early in his life in A Wizard of Earthsea, then acts as a mentor to the young priestess Tenar in The Tombs of Atuan and the young prince Arren in The Farthest Shore as each of these characters comes of age and accepts their role in life as he once did.

Advertisement:

The later books shift the focus away from Ged and instead build Earthsea itself as a more complex and rich character, exploring the history and geography of its various islands, examining the lives of commoners who don't spend their days sailing around on grand adventures and speaking to dragons, and addressing the massive weaknesses of the archipelago's society, especially its treatment of women.

In many ways the Earthsea Cycle represented a radical departure from the then dominant view of fantasy in featuring a wizard as the main character rather than as a supporting character, featuring a cast of mostly brown-skinned and red-skinned characters, featuring women in prominent roles, exploring an islander society instead of the standard medieval European setting, and advancing the story by having the characters make increasingly complex moral and personal decisions rather than simply winning in sword fights or obtaining treasure. It also avoids ever becoming particularly verbose; all but the fifth book are well under 300 pages, with few words spent on the intricate and time-consuming exposition that defines other fantasy authors like Tolkien. 2018's The Books of Earthsea, the first book to collect the Cycle in its entirety, books, short stories and all, clocks in at just over 1000 pages in hardback, including Charles Vess's illustrations.

Advertisement:

The BBC adapted the works as radio dramas twice: in 1996, as a two hour adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea, and in April and May 2015, as a full adaptation of the original trilogy (A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore) in six episodes, each half an hour long.

This series contains examples of:

Animorphism: Wizards are capable of transforming into animals, though the process is dangerous. In one particularly memorable example, Ged turns into a hawk in order to escape an enemy—and, forced to spend weeks in his new form, almost ends up getting stuck that way.

Badass Boast: In a world where the magic of true names is a serious thing, and someone who has your true name and sufficient willpower can control you with it, Orm Embar proudly uses his true name as his only name. Of course, he is a very powerful dragon, but it's still an impressive boast.

Bad Dreams: In The Tombs of Atuan, the heroine suffers Bad Dreams after she sacrifices some prisoners.

Baleful Polymorph: A spell to change another person involuntarily into an animal is possible, but difficult.

While wizards are not strictly forbidden from using forms of magic other than illusion, there is a powerful taboo against it, for very good reason.

All "magic" is prohibited to Kargs and in the Kargad Lands. As it turns out, they worship evil gods who hate magic, which is actually OK.

Bedouin Rescue Service: Happens in The Farthest Shore, when Ged is badly wounded and the heroes run out of water. They are stranded in the middle of the ocean, but fortunately, there is a tribe of nomadic raft dwellers who happen to pass nearby.

Big Eater: Penthe, who is plump when she is introduced and continues to gain weight because of her enormous appetite.

Rush: Are you fetching and carrying for witches now? Tern: Yes, and I will till she dies. And then I'll take her daughter to Roke. And if you want to read the Book of Names, you can come with us.

In the short story "Dragonfly":

The Patterner: We are four against him. The Herbal: They are five against us. The Namer: Has it come to this, that we stand at the edge of the forest Segoy planted and talk of how to destroy one another? The Patterner: Yes. What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.

Child Mage: Ged is this early on in A Wizard of Earthsea before he goes on to become Archmage. His aunt, a witch, notes that he has unusual magical power, and when he was eight or nine, he saved his entire village from the Kargs using a spell he essentially made up on the spot. Some time after, he goes to Roke, which, as it's a wizarding school, is also full of child mages.

Conlang: Hardic, which we see a little of. And Kargish, Osskili and Old Speech, in which wizards cast spells.

Continuity Snarl: There are major problems in continuity between the first trilogy and the later books.

Cool Pet: In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged has an otak, a small, very shy wild creature that rides around in his hood and will tolerate almost no one else. When he's attacked at one point, it tries to protect him, screaming (this is notable because otaks have no voices). Ged is heartbroken when it dies.

Cosmic Deadline: Tehanu is fairly slow-paced and low-key until the last handful of pages, when suddenly the main characters fall into a trap laid by an evil wizard who had previously been a background character. He savagely beats them then attempts to force them to jump off a cliff to their deaths, prompting their adopted daughter to reveal that she's actually a dragon in human form by summoning a bigger dragon to come burn the evil wizard off the face of the world.

Damsel in Distress: Tenar to Ged in The Tombs of Atuan. (It can be argued that Ged is also a Distressed Dude to her.)

The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: At the end of The Farthest Shore, after breaking the laws of magic to conquer death itself, Cob can't even remember his own true name.

Defrosting Ice Queen: Arha/Tenar fits this trope very much in The Tombs of Atuan, although there is a subversion in that the protagonist, Ged, who plays the role of dashing adventurer in the novel, does not "defrost" her through sex as often happens, but rather helps her develop a sense of morality and reconnect with her buried humanity.

Demoted to Extra: Ged is the main character of the first and third books (being the eponymous Wizard of Earthsea), and plays an important role in the second even though he's not its protagonist; but after he loses his power at the end of The Farthest Shore, he becomes a peripheral figure in Tehanu and The Other Wind, having given way to Tenar and Tehanu.

Deserted Island: Ged is sea-wrecked on a very small one during the first book.

Deus ex Machina: At the end of Tehanu, where Kalessin arrives and saves Tenar right as she's about to be pushed off a cliff by Ged. Aspen and the rest of the men are unceremoniously done away with as well.

Deuteragonist: Ged's character development is secondary to Tenar's in The Tombs of Atuan and to Arren's in The Farthest Shore.

Do with Him as You Will: Ged does this in The Farthest Shore. On a slaver ship. Where there are only half a dozen slavers. All he needs is to remove the slaves' chains.

Dragon Hoard: The dragons in the series are obsessed with hoarding jewelry... at least at first.

Dragon Rider: Ged earns the title of Dragon Lord simply because he's one of the few humans the dragons will deign to speak with. So when the most ancient dragon gives him a lift home, it's a significant mark of honor.

The Dying Walk: In Tehanu, Tenar helps her old friend Aihal (Ogion the Silent) walk from his deathbed to the meadow where he wants to die.

The "Nameless Ones" are entities that the wizards refer to as the dark powers of the Earth, which are the focus of the oldest religion of the Kargad lands in The Tombs of Atuan.

Endless Daytime: One of the backstory's greatest heroes, Erreth-Akbe, is said to have gained eternal fame by defeating a being (a mage or possibly a dragon) called the Firelord who sought to stop the sun at noon so that there would be light unending.

Enemy Mine: In The Other Wind, representatives of four cultures normally at loggerheads — if not outright enmity — have to pool their respective mythological knowledge in order to figure out the truth about an ancient evil.

Expanded Universe: Le Guin's Earthsea short stories, some of which were compiled into Tales From Earthsea.

Exponential Potential: Dragons seem to follow this pattern. Any competent wizard can kill a young dragon with little to no effort—early in his career, Ged defeats six dragons in rapid succession pretty easily. Ancient dragons, however, are almost impossible to kill by conventional means and can use magic just as well if not better than the most powerful human mages.

Famed In-Story: A Wizard of Earthsea is explicitly described as being about Ged when he was young and not famed in story; in it, a friend declares he will make a song so his deeds will be remembered, but either he didn't or the song was lost (only distorted pieces survive). However, by The Farthest Shore, Ged is indeed famed.

Despite the lines in A Wizard of Earthsea saying that stories of the events of that novel were lost, it is clear that they are common knowledge by the time of The Other Wind, as shown by Alder.

Familiar: Ged's Otak—a small, rodentlike creature similar in size and disposition to a weasel. He tames it in the wild using the Old Speech, and it follows him around everywhere after that, usually riding on his shoulder or resting in his hood.

Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Ged's father, a blacksmith, is always telling him his fantasies will do him no good, and that learning to make a living as a blacksmith is the only realistic way for Ged to get by in the world. He's proven wrong when Ged becomes a wizard.

Farm Boy: Ged starts out as a goatherd, son of a blacksmith, on a very rural island out on the edge of civilization.

Fat Best Friend: Vetch, although he is more intelligent and complex than most examples of this trope

Feminist Fantasy: In the later books, from Tehanu on, Le Guin re-examines the setting and its assumptions (such as that wizards must all be male and celibate) with a feminist eye.

Functional Magic: The magic taught in Roke seems to cover the gamut pretty widely, though with an unusual caveat of geography: the further one gets away from Roke, the less reliable the magic that Roke teaches becomes. Vetch, grown up in the East Reach, says that certain spells he learned at home are useless at Roke, while some spells taught to him in Roke lose their potency in the East Reach.

Additionally, the way magic works in Earthsea is that it's impossible for anything said in the true speech, the dragons' tongue, to be a lie. Anything you say in the true speech is true, even if physical reality has to change to make it so. The only exception seems to be dragons, who speak nothing but the true speech, and can still lie all they want.

Gender-Restricted Ability: The original trilogy features mostly male wizards. In fact, there was a proverb "As weak as a woman's magic." Later books reveal that this is more of a cultural restriction, however.

God-Emperor: In the Kargad lands, the (apparently mortal) Godking is worshipped as a deity, which, by the time of The Tombs of Atuan, has severely pissed off The Unknown Nameless Ones.

Ged, after unleashing a never-exactly specified evil into the world, is scratched up rather terribly by the thing on one side of his face, and scarred for life. However, in that same book someone says approvingly that the scars indicate him as a true hero—and more importantly they are a sign of his kinship with the Nameless Ones, which Tenar is priestess of. Ged himself is actually not aware that anyone thinks his scars are heroic. The guy who thinks this is very young, and very awed by Ged, and he thinks the scars are the tracks of a dragon's claws, since Ged is known for having vanquished an important dragon early in his career.

Averted in Tehanu, where Therru gets a terrible set of scars after being thrown in a fire, but these are not an indication that she's a terrible person.

He-Man Woman Hater: In Tehanu, every unsympathetic man is one of these, especially the wizards.

Heroic Sacrifice: Erreth-Akbe. The dragon Orm attacks Havnor, forcing Erreth-Akbe to take dragon form and prevent Orm from destroying the city. Erreth-Akbe manages to defeat Orm, but dies in the process.

Heroic Suicide: In The Word of Unbinding, the good wizard Festin is entombed by the evil Voll, and after trying every means he can to escape but failing, ends his life with the titular word. This sends him into the afterlife, in which he can find Voll's corpse and seal him to it, which prevents him from harming any more of the living.

High Priest: Arha, the Eaten One, the high priestess of the Powers in The Tombs of Atuan.

Human Sacrifice: Done (and threatened to be done) quite often in The Tombs of Atuan.

I Am One of Those, Too: In The Farthest Shore, Ged tells Arren they are going to pose as merchants from Arren's island, and has the foresight to ask him to give some large town as a fake birthplace — just in case they run into a townsman.

I Know Your True Name: The name is the thing, and the true name is the true thing. Know the true name, and you can control the thing. This power is limited in that there are literally countless numbers of names in the world, and no human, at least, can ever learn them all. You can't control the sea, for example, for you to control the sea you have to know the name of every shore it touches, something impossible for a man to do in one lifetime.

Language of Truth: The Old Speech. Except for the dragons. Well, dragons can't lie, but they can certainly omit, obfuscate and otherwise mislead.* Or, you know, set you on fire and eat you.

The Legend of Chekhov: The myth of human-dragon hybrids trapped in human form, mentioned at the beginning of Tehanu, is proven true at the book's end and forms the basis for the plot of the next novel, The Other Wind.

A much more specific example, limited to Ged only, who used up all his magic to seal the door between the land of the dead and the living.

Which makes for a parallel with his teacher Ogion, who used much of his magic up to stop a disaster of some kind prior to the first book.

The later novels suggest that the full-scale version may be beginning.

Magic Staff: Wizards trained on Roke are distinguished from mere sorcerers by carrying staves. Ged is awarded a staff made of yew bound with copper in A Wizard of Earthsea. When it is lost in Osskil, Ogion makes him a replacement from a length of wood formerly intended for a longbow. Wizards of Paln, certainly Seppel in The Other Wind, and at first Cob in The Farthest Shore, do not seem to use staves- but Cob does acquire the metal staff of the Pelnish Grey Mage later in the book.

Magic Versus Science: Tenar (the priestess) is ironically disbelieving that Ged can perform magic until she sees him actually cast a spell. This is because of her Kargish upbringing—the Kargad are magically uninclined and take a rather arrogantly skeptical view of the western world's magical abilities (this isn't because they are in any way rationalists: in fact the Kargads are the only people in Earthsea who actually worship gods, and nasty ones at that—the Nameless Ones that Tenar serves are pretty horrible, while most Kargads prefer to worship their own kings).

Every human gets a new secret name when they come of age, and adopt a publicly-used nickname. In A Wizard of Earthsea, the boy called Duny becomes the man called Sparrowhawk, whose secret true name is Ged.

In The Tombs of Atuan, the rite turning Tenar into the priestess involves taking away her name; henceforth, she is Arha, the Eaten One. Ged restores "Tenar" to her, a significant plot event.

Medieval European Fantasy: Totally averted. Most of the characters are dark-skinned/non-white (with great care taken to distinguish between the various shades of brown), and if any era of actual history matches Earthsea, it's ancient times, not the Middle Ages (for instance, the tech level is late Bronze Age, augmented by widespread use of magic for things like animal husbandry and weather control).

If you're having a hard time figuring this out, just envision the settlements as looking Middle Eastern or Indian or perhaps Polynesian (and yes, African), and you'll probably end up freeing yourself from the chains of this trope forever.

The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: The reason why it's dangerous for a wizard to stay shifted into an animal shape. The longer you stay in a given form, the more your mind gets taken over by that form's instincts.

Namedar: High-level wizards are implied to have Namedar for people's True Names, which is used in coming-of-age ceremonies, among other things.

Naming Ceremony: Children are given their True Name by a wizard in a special ceremony. Sparrowhawk receives his in A Wizard of Earthsea.

Never Learned to Read: The Kargs as a people view reading and writing as "black arts" and avoid them at all costs, though ironically they are excellent at mathematics. When Ged rescues Tenar from the Tombs of Atuan and brings her with him to his land, she eventually learns to how speak his language, and then to read and write in it.

The Nothing After Death: The land of the dead is presented as a dry sunless place where the dead keep their names, but not their spirits. This is later revealed to not be the real afterlife but a barrier to reaching the real one, established because the first human wizards wanted access to the true names and thus power. Nice job breaking it, wizards.

Never Learned to Read: The Kargs believe that reading and writing is abhorrent, so literacy in their lands is virtually nonexistent. When Ged brings Tenar with him back to the main archipelago, she eventually learns to speak his language as well as read and write it.

Never Sleep Again: In The Other Wind, the wizard Alder is plagued by dreams of his wife in the land of the dead.

Nice Job Breaking It, Herod!: A king received a prophecy his empire will fall because of a person from the former royal house. By then, there were only two children left; a boy and a girl. He was afraid to kill them (Royal Blood), so he banished them to a desolate island. They survive until old age. Then, one day, Ged is washed ashore. The girl gives him an old family keepsake...

Ominous Fog: The boy who will grow up to be Sparrowhawk uses a fog control/illusion spell to confuse invaders and save his village.

One-Winged Angel: Subverted in "The Rule of Names". Two sorcerers get into a duel involving shapeshifting; it ends with one back in his human form, and the other a dragon. The human says something like, "I'm tired of this; it ends now; show me your true shape, by the power of your True Name." He speaks the Name. The dragon is unaffected, and replies, "That is my true name; this is my true shape." CHOMP!

Only Known by Their Nickname: Most people in Earthsea are like this—they receive a true name when they come of age, but keep it a secret to all but those whom they trust completely. Ged for instance, is known to the vast majority of Earthsea's population as "Sparrowhawk".

Our Dragons Are Different: The intelligent and deadly Tolkien variety, at least in the Dragon Run corner of the far West Reach. When one approaches the East Reach, the farthest islets of Earthsea, there are still dragons... but they're about the size of housecats, and completely harmless and unintelligible. The dragons depicted in the earliest stories and novels resemble Smaug (intelligent, capricious Western Dragons), but gradually become more varied. They are highly magical, and indeed seem to be affected by the geographical limits to magic — magic in the West Reach, where dragons are huge, cunning, and rich, and rule both the skies and islands, is different from magic in the East Reach, where dragons are very small, unintelligent, and often domesticated as housepets. Although they're highly intelligent, often wise creatures, they're inclined to simply kill most people who get near them. A rare, powerful mage may become a Dragonlord, which Ged (who is one himself), describes as simply someone with whom a dragon will reliably speak rather than eat. Dragons and humans are strongly implied to be descended from the same original species. Also, dragons naturally speak the world's original language, the True Speech, which is significant because in Earthsea, magic is in wordsand names. Humans have to learn it, and cannot lie in it, while dragons can. There's also the existence of dragon-people such as Tehanu and Irian, though how exactly that whole thing works is never fully explained.

Path of Inspiration: Originally, the series portrayed the Kargish religion this way, its religious beliefs (particularly their prejudice against magic-users) being imposed by evil gods. This was later retconned into being a good/neutral religion which got corrupted.

Politeness Judo: In A Wizard of Earthsea, the last task the apprentice wizard Sparrowhawk must achieve before he leaves the school as a fully-fledged wizard is to discover the name of the Master Doorkeeper. Since a wizard will always protect the secret of his name, he thinks long and hard about what form of magic he could use to wrest the information from the vastly more powerful Master Doorkeeper. Eventually he goes before the master and admits he must give up, but only after asking one question: "What is your name?" The Master Doorkeeper cheerfully gives him the answer: politely requesting his name was in fact the solution to the test.

The Power of Language: A Central Theme of the series. Earthsea starts out fairly simply, as a world with a Language of Truth that doubles as a Language of Magic reliant on the memorization of things' True Names, but as the story progresses, it questions the origins of this magic and reveals that words only have so much power—language-based magic is a relatively shallow, masculine form of magic, and there are deeper forms of magic and understanding that do not rely on the imperfect medium of speech.

Powers That Be: The Nameless Ones in The Tombs of Atuan. Their actual existence is up for debate until the point where Ged pisses them off and they retaliate by trying to collapse the great labyrinth around him and Tenar.

Privileged Rival: When Ged arrives at Roke Island, he gains a rival named Jasper, who's the son of the Lord of the Domain of Eolg on the Isle of Havnor. Ged is just the son of a smith, and is rubbed the wrong way by Jasper's extremely polite but condescending manners.

Reality Warper: A wizard can do this, if he changes something's true name, or otherwise changes something's nature.

Reality Warping Is Not a Toy: If you use the Old Speech to warp reality, you will face the consequences (probably). Plus, some forms of reality warping are just plain impractical: For example, one could use it to change a rock into a diamond, but due to the way True Name magic works, all of the islands of Earthsea would change into diamonds too, which obviously would make them pretty unsuitable for living on.

Rescued from the Underworld: Attempted by Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea; he follows the soul of a dying child on the way to the land of the dead, but he doesn't manage to keep her from entering it and being lost.

Resurrected for a Job: It is mentioned that one wizard used to summon souls of ancient kings and wizards for royal council. It ended up with him being exiled, since, apparently, the advices of the dead are of little use to the living.

Rite of Passage: In A Wizard of Earthsea, the mage Ogion the Silent gives Duny his True Name of "Ged" in a coming of age ceremony.

Royal Blood: Why the God-Emperor did not just kill the prince and princess but instead stranded them on an island where Ged ran into them.

Sacred Hospitality: Sacred hospitality appears pretty deeply ingrained in Earthsea, in both the Hardic and Kargad lands. Despite Ged's private gripe in A Wizard of Earthsea, his boat was provisioned for free on the island where people thought he might be some kind of demon, and the innkeeper who told him their island already had a wizard gave him free lodging, food, and ale. Staff-carrying wizards almost never pay for such things, or for ship's passage. While hospitality to wizards is mere common sense, there are many examples in the stories of non-wizards (or wizards in disguise) getting the benefit of sacred hospitality.

Scars Are Forever: Ged has disfiguring scars down one side of his face, inflicted by an evil Living Shadow he summoned as a boy, which remain even when he is the Archmage. He seems to regard them as a reminder of the cost of arrogance and misuse of magic.

Shadow Archetype: In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged accidentally raises an evil spirit representing the darkness in himself, which is actually called the Shadow in the book. It follows him everywhere until he can call it by its true name—which is Ged.

Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Wizards who spend too much time shapeshifted into animal forms can forget their humanity, especially when distracted by the animal's power of flight or ability to freely range the oceans. Ged almost loses his personality once. It is stated that one wizard spent so much time as a bear he lost his humanity and killed his son. He had to be hunted down afterwards.

Shoulder-Sized Dragon: The harekki Yarrow keeps as a pet in A Wizard of Earthsea, possibly the very first example.

Shout-Out: The word for stone in Old Speech is tolk and that for sea is inien, making Earthsea translate as "tolkienian".

Small, Secluded World: The exiled brother and sister Ged encounters on a small island in A Wizard of Earthsea. They were marooned on the island as small children, and having spent their whole lives there have "forgotten that there were other people in the world."

Somebody Named Nobody: The Nameless Ones, formerly the main deities of the Kargad religion, are manifestations of Earth's more malevolent aspects. Some reside in the labyrinths on the island of Atuan.

Space Whale Aesop: While probably not intended to be a simple Aesop, Ged's explanation to Arren about life and death and how Cob's actions disturbed The Balance may look like one: "Do not desire eternal life, or else words will lose their true meanings and everyone will eventually go mad".

Stern Chase: A Wizard of Earthsea has Ged getting chased from island to island by a creature from the shadow realms.

Summoning Ritual: In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged decides to show off by summoning the spirit of Queen Elfarran from the dead. He succeeds, but also inadvertently calls a "Shadow", which promptly tries to kill him, then stalks him for the next several years trying to finish him off.

Telescoping Staff: Ged's staff in A Wizard of Earthsea. He picks a blade of grass, he speaks to it to expand it into a full-sized wooden staff, and to suit this trope, it is able to shrink/grow it again.

That's No Moon!: Ged once goes to an island to fight off dragons. The first dragons are relatively small and easy to defeat... then the castle on the island moves and it's the main dragon.

Title Drop: A variant - the titles of the books are often casually said early on, and then dropped traditionally with meaning. In the case of The Other Wind, the title could almost be considered Arc Words.

"Where," the Summoner said, "where is that land?"

"On the other wind," said Irian. "The west beyond the west."

Together in Death: Averted. There are no emotions in the afterlife. Though this is possibly subverted in The Other Wind, when Alder is reunited with his dead wife Lily.

Training the Gift of Magic: Ged is first taken as a trainee by a witch when he shows a remarkable ability to cast simple spells after hearing them once, then recruited for (extensive) training at a Wizarding School after showing greater but still limited power. It's possible that anyone could achieve something if they knew the right true names, but most people would probably be dangerously clumsy at best.

Trilogy Creep: Additional volumes were very belatedly added to the original three.

Tsundere: Tenar in The Tombs of Atuan. By the time we see her again two books later, in Tehanu, she seems to have grown out of it.

Turning Back Human: In A Wizard of Earthsea Ged spends too much time in the form of a hawk (and focused on nothing but survival), so he has to be turned back into human by his teacher and even then it takes a couple of days before his mind is back to normal.

Ged has a half scarred face from an encounter with a vaguely defined creature that he accidentally summoned. (It later turns out to be, appropriately, his own dark doppelgänger.)

Therru provides a full body example of this trope, having been horribly burned by her parents prior to the events of the book.

Unequal Rites: A distinction is made between "true" magic (based on an ancient language, studied in a Wizarding School, practiced only by men) and several lesser forms of magic, including sorcery, illusionism and village witches. There are also other forms of religious magic in different cultures.

Unfamiliar Ceiling: Turns up surprisingly little, given Ged spends an absurd amount of time being generally passed out. This specific trope only occurs once, at Osskil.

Unusual Pets for Unusual People: In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged ends up with an otak as his familiar. It's explicitly noted that otaks are not easily domesticated at best, and it is shown when his otak nearly bites some of the other students at his school.

Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Roke Island is home to the School of Magic which results in all sorts of bizarre occurrences such as flying houses, people transforming into an animal (or vice versa), etc. The locals are used to this and barely give a second glance.

Vow of Celibacy: Wizards are required to be male and celibate. One entry in Tales from Earthsea shows the origins of the Wizarding School on Roke, showing that they initially admitted women and didn't require celibacy, but an extremist faction gained control of the order early on and changed the rules. Another entry has a woman with magical gifts attempt to gain admittance to Roke, with the help of a wizard who was kicked out for bringing a barmaid back to his dorm room and getting caught in flagrante delicto.

Weather Dissonance: Wizards like controlling it. It's the first ability that Ged manifests. But it's not always wise.

Weirdness Magnet: Even after Sparrowhawk loses his magic in the third book, he retains his ability to turn up precisely where and when he's needed. Tenar comments on this pointedly.

When You Snatch the Pebble: To graduate from the wizards' School on Roke, a student must find out what the Master Doorkeeper's name is. While there may be a way to find out by magic, it's perfectly acceptable simply to ask him what it is, and he will tell you.

Wizard Duel: Not actually a fight, but Ged's attempt to outdo a schoolyard rival with flashy demonstrations of magic led to tragedy in A Wizard of Earthsea.

Wizarding School: The school for magic on Roke, which only admits men, and which is portrayed pretty much as the center of the magical world. May be the Trope Maker.

When Sparrowhawk (Ged) travels to the island of Osskil in the far north, his magic fails because he isn't familiar with the differences in magic there.

The mage Vetch tells of the differences in magic between locations.

Sparrowhawk: They say, Rules change in the Reaches. Vetch: Aye, a true saying, I can tell you. There are good spells I learned on Roke that have no power here, or go all awry; and also there are spells worked here I never learned on Roke. Every land has its own powers, and the farther one goes from the Inner Lands, the less one can guess about those powers and their governance.

Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb: In A Wizard of Earthsea, the young students are showing off their spellcraft when Ged foolishly casts a dangerous and powerful spell to show off. He nearly dies himself, the Archmage does die, and a creature is unleashed.

Alternative Title(s):A Wizard Of Earthsea, The Earthsea Trilogy, The Tombs Of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, The Other Wind, Earthsea Trilogy

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy